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Imaginary Theatre Professionalising Theatre in the Levant 1940- 19901

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Imaginary Theatre Professionalising Theatre in the Levant 1940- 19901 Journal of Global Theatre History ISSN: 2509-6990 Vol. 3, No 1, 2019 Ziad Adwan Imaginary Theatre Professionalising Theatre in the Levant 1940- 19901 Abstract This paper examines theatre education in the Levant, i.e. Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan and Palestine, between late 1940s and early 1990s. As a relatively new phenomenon in the region, Western-style theatre has always sought, but not always found, political, religious, social and artistic recognition. In addition to institutional and “professional” theatre initiatives, this era also witnessed the academic approaches to theatre in the region. Introducing theatre to the Levant was dependent on wealthy citizens who afforded trips to Europe and returned to spread theatre in their cities. Later in the 1970s, and influenced by Brechtian Epic Theatre, Social Realism and the Theatre of the Absurd, governmental and academic theatre practices and literature rebelled against the existing theatre models, including the theatre makers that were glorified as national symbols. It is argued that theatre makers and theatre institutions in the Levant adopted an ideal description of theatre that was hardly recognised locally. Associating theatre to noble issues in order to promote “serious theatre,” lessened the credibility of local experiences. The dependence on socialist and nationalist ideologies assisted in legitimising theatre in the region, but simultaneously, idealising theatre separated this new art from the existing practices, and consequently mystified it in the region. Author Ziad Adwan studied for an MA in Text and Performance Studies at Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) and King’s College in London, and then took a PhD in Theatre Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London; his thesis was on “Mistakes and Making Mistakes in Cultural Representations”. Ziad’s work comprises acting, directing and writing for theatre as well as academic works. He taught at the Higher Institute of Dramatic Arts in Damascus/ Syria 2009-2013. Ziad is currently based in Germany and is affiliated with the Global Theatre Histories Research Project, Developing Theatre (Building Expert Networks for Theatre in Emerging Countries after 1945) at LMU Munich, and publishes articles in several academic journals. Ziad co-founded TANWEEN Company for Theatre and Dance and has been directing theatre and performance projects in Germany. Keywords: Theatre education, Levant, Socialist Bloc, star-system, serious theatre, Sa’adalla Wannous, Fairouz. Ziad Adwan Imaginary Theatre Professionalising Theatre in the Levant 1940-1990 1 Journal of Global Theatre History ISSN: 2509-6990 Vol. 3, No 1, 2019 Published under the Creative Commons License CC-BY 4.0 All rights reserved by the Author. Introduction The Lebanese actress Hanane Hajj Ali was studying biology and medicine at the wish of her parents,2 but the shock of the Lebanese civil war in 1976 prompted her to begin thinking about Lebanon, resistance and the relationship to Palestine. Hajj Ali started to write, but she felt that she wanted to do more than solo work, so she applied to the Institute of Fine Arts and started studying acting, while continuing to study medicine. She had to lie to her parents about studying theatre. Two years later, her father discovered that his daughter was doing a second course of studies. He punished her for lying and for damaging the family’s reputation by wanting to become an actress. Although Hajj Ali’s parents were theatre-goers, they denied their daughter a theatre education and any involvement in the theatre. However, they changed their minds when they saw Hajj Ali’s first play, which was highly political. While gender might have played a role in forbidding a daughter from studying theatre, the situation was, to some extent, the same for male actors. Syrian actor Jihad Saad, for instance, was sent to France by his family in the 1980s to study engineering, but he returned to Syria after a few years to surprise his parents with a theatre certificate from the Academy of Arts in Cairo. As a relatively new phenomenon in the Levant,3 Western-style theatre has always sought, but not always found, political, religious, social and artistic recognition. The first play to be staged in an Arabic-speaking country was presented in Beirut in 1847 (Wannous 1996, p. 67). Before the mid-nineteenth century, Molière, Sophocles and Shakespeare meant nothing to the Arab public and intellectuals. Arab philosophers had been aware of the theatre, but this art remained distant from the Arab passion for poetry, the literature with which Arabs are most familiar. In the centuries that preceded 1847, Arab translators and philosophers translated theatrical terminology in order to make it comprehensible in terms of literature and poetry. Thus, according to Ibn Rushd (1126- ,heja’a ھﺠﺎء madeeh, literally, ‘eulogy’; and comedy as ﻣﺪﯾﺢ tragedy was translated as ,(1198 marsah, when it was first مرسح literally, “libel” (Abbas 1971, p. 505) ‘Theatre’ was called -masrah (Kassab م"ح introduced to the Arabic-speaking world, but later people called it Hassan 1997, p. 443). The staging of the first Arab play in 1847 did not mean that theatre found a welcoming environment in the region in which it could flourish. Arabic literature on theatre mainly discusses how to legitimise theatre in an environment that represses it religiously, politically, economically and aesthetically. Up until the 1960s, it was hard to change the general public’s understanding of artistic and theatrical terms. The loanword ‘artist’, for instance, connoted ‘whore’ for decades, and it was one of the problems the Syrian Ministry of Culture confronted when it attempted to bureaucratise theatre and professionalise ‘artists’ and theatre makers in the 1960s.4 Up to the year 2000, the struggle to expand theatre in the Levant resulted in one autonomous theatre academy, a handful of acting departments at universities and a few theatre venues, most of which had originally been cinemas. Students, trainees and academics had no opportunity to watch plays relevant to their studies. Teaching theatre in the Levant proved problematic, as tutors had to teach an absent art, and students had to learn about an art they could not recognise and standardise. Ziad Adwan Imaginary Theatre Professionalising Theatre in the Levant 1940-1990 2 Journal of Global Theatre History ISSN: 2509-6990 Vol. 3, No 1, 2019 In this paper, I examine theatre education in the Levant, i.e. Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan and Palestine between the late 1940s and the early 1990s. The new nation states in the Levant shared some common elements in terms of their historical, geographical, social and political dynamics. And at the theatrical level, they shared several aspects that made disseminating theatre in these counties, to some extent, different from in the other Arabic-speaking countries. Marvin Carlson suggests that Arabic-speaking countries are divided into three theatrical regions: North Africa, which has a close connection to French theatre; the Gulf States, which resist Western influences including theatre; and the Middle East, considered the centre of Arab theatre (Carlson 2003, pp. 42–47). Don Rubin proposes a similar division in The World Encyclopedia of Contemporary Theatre, and divides the Arabic-speaking countries into the same “three theatrical segments” (Rubin 1999, pp. 12–13). Egypt, however, holds a special position in the Arab world, and it was the main influence not only in terms of theatre, but also in general political and social terms. Thus, one of the main differences that made theatre in the Levant different from Egyptian theatre is that the former was influenced by the latter. The Egyptian influence decreased when the nation states were founded in the region in the late 1940s. Gradually, Egyptian plays became rare on the Levant stages in comparison to the rise of international plays, Greek and classical tragedies and local national texts.5 Although Egypt had one of the first theatre academies in the Arab world, teaching of theatre in the Levant was directly influenced by Western-style theatre, i.e. by Europe, and in the context of the era this paper is examining, by the Socialist bloc. Certainly, the colonial period played a major part in this influence, but the dependence on local individuals who had direct contact with European theatre also reflects the demand for and interest in this European influence. Most of Egyptian theatre practices, therefore, were perceived by theatre makers in the Levant as insufficient models of theatre, a treatment that also included local theatre practices in the region. This paper argues that theatre makers and institutions in the Levant adopted an ideal description of theatre that was hardly recognised locally. With the foundation of the new nation states in the region, many theatre makers attempted to create model(s) of ‘serious theatre’ (as distinguished from farces and private commercial theatre, which were commonly associated with Egyptian comedies that were broadcast on local TV channels). The dependence on socialist and nationalist ideologies helped to legitimise theatre in the region, but simultaneously separated theatre from existing practices, and consequently mystified this art, and Egyptian theatre was no different. In the first section, I cast light on an ambiguous theatre scene that lasted from the late 1940s to the late 1960s in the Levant. I explore, through local literature on theatre and personal interviews, the processes of introducing theatre to a region that lacked
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